This feature is effectively impossible to replicate. Only Microsoft positioned itself to have:
- dataset (GitHub)
- tech (openai)
- training (azure)
- platform (vscode)
I'm impressed. They did an amazing job from a corporate strategy standpoint. Also directionally things are getting interesting
Microsoft is really the best at the slow strategic burn.
* You host your project in github
* You fund your project using github sponsors
* You develop your project using github codespaces
* You compile, test and deploy using github actions
* You cloud host on azure
Each individual feature is definitely great. I'm not trying to be critical of Microsoft trying to turn their investment in github into a profitable business. This is a kind of vertical integration that is guaranteed to lead to some efficiencies.
One prediction based on this stack is the next piece could be some sort of subscription payment architecture. I wouldn't be surprised to see some kind of Microsoft Marketplace integration coming, but maybe branded under github. Some kind of SaaS subscription enabler.
The benefits or Microsoft owning GitHub seem to keep rolling in. The visual studio integration has gotten much better already and I'm excited to see how they begin to integrate github into Azure.
This looks really good. At work we're using Git with GitHub Enterprise, and while training has solved most problems there's still the occasional complaint about the tools.
I hope this works well in the VS workflow, Microsoft are making some really great steps in the dev tools space.
Microsoft's been orienting themselves as a developer services company over the past few years. Azure, vscode, open source dotnet, they want free onramps onto their services.
They were missing CI/CD tools, and source control. They had VSTS and Team Foundation Server but there's no way theyd beat the ubiquity of git.
I'm betting they're going to now start offering CI via GitHub like Gitlab (or offering a unified marketplace to allow other companies to fill this role and they take a cut) and then folding GitHub Enterprise into their suite of developer tools. Just like Visual Studio is vscode++, GitHub Enterprise will be invested in to where it does a whole lot more fancy things, and free GitHub is the onramp. And then Microsoft will have a portfolio that spans the entire code development pipeline.
GitHub before Microsoft notoriously shied away from innovating/iterating on their core business for years. We had half as many features before then.
IMO feature wise, GitHub really has improved tenfold. I remember having to fight third party CIs and project trackers, now we're running them all on GitHub and it's a well-integrated pleasure. If it does work, which it usually does and hopefully goes back to doing.
I also really enjoy their live vscode IDE, which lets you e.g. make small changes to PRs in a web vscode by pressing . on the PR page. This is different from their hosted VM offering and free, confusingly.
Thanks. Do you have any insight into MSFT's strategy for GitHub? I assume it helps make it seem developer friendly, data-mining, identifying projects/new ideas of value and validation, and is part of their becoming more of a cloud company strategy.
It's also some pretty serious vertical integration for Github/Microsoft!
IDE: Github
Source control + collaboration: Github
CI/CD: Github
Hosting: Github + Azure (with docker and azure functions that experience is pretty much already there technically?)
What nobody is really commenting on is how huge of an opportunity this is for Microsoft to reinvent itself in the eyes of the developer community.
If Microsoft can somehow manage to gain trust from Github users, which is very possible and desirable for them, it will make Azure more compelling in many ways than Amazon as a cloud computing platform.
After Amazon's acquisition of Cloud9, Microsoft is the first big company to try something really bold and inventive in cloud computing. Github can prioritize making code deploy to all clouds AND make it especially appealing for customers to choose Azure, as there will exist amazing opportunities for end to end product optimizations here. Seems really smart for me, and given that Microsoft is really hell bent on changing people's negative opinions about them, they have all the right incentives to make Github even more awesome than it already is.
Oh wow, this looks interesting, I hope it gets some traction. As someone who migrated away from Github the moment Microsoft bought it, I will be watching it and keeping fingers crossed.
I'm impressed. They did an amazing job from a corporate strategy standpoint. Also directionally things are getting interesting
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